Wilson High School Teacher Pushes School to Acknowledge Namesake's Racist, Sexist Views

Three thousand miles from Portland, a debate is raging at Princeton University that sounds familiar to Hyung Nam.

Nam teaches social studies at Wilson High School in Southwest Portland, and for months Nam has waged a public campaign to persuade Portland Public Schools to change his school's name and acknowledge former U.S. President Woodrow Wilson's deeply racist and sexist policies.

Students at Princeton, where a residential college and a graduate school carry Wilson's name, have urged trustees to strip the university of those honors, even though Wilson served as president of Princeton before moving to the White House.

Tuesday, the New York Times editorial board sided with Princeton students, calling Wilson's legacy "toxic."

"[Wilson] was an unapologetic racist whose administration rolled back the gains that African-Americans achieved just after the Civil War, purged black workers from influential jobs and transformed the government into an instrument of white supremacy," the editorial board wrote.

Here in Portland, Nam has had less traction. None of the top administrators he's emailed about his idea has responded, he says. But he's equally convinced "Wilson" has got to go. In addition to having racist views, Wilson was no friend of the burgeoning women's movement.

"We'd have to be ignorant about history to continue to affiliate ourselves with this man," Nam wrote in an email to PPS staff last spring.

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